(Lymington, England)- French sailmaker Alain Janet is the founder of
Solar Cloth System which has been busy developing a practical system for
generating electrical power from thin photovoltaic films laminated onto
modern sail fabrics…In the past sailors have taken the ecological high ground over other boaters, yet modern sailing requires far more electrical power than it used to. With new onboard technologies and their growing demands for power, it’s clear that sailors now experience regular energy shortages while cruising and/or racing, even over relatively short distances. And of course, the problem grows exponentially when you are racing across oceans and around the world.
Sea and sun go hand in hand, so solar power has long seemed to offer an answer to this problem. However, rigid solar panels are heavy, bulky and require a lot of ingenuity to install discretely; but what about producing electricity with our sails? See the article attached here- thanks to SEAHORSE magazine.
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